


Enough

by SpaceMatriarchy



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Cancer, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Post Reichenbach, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceMatriarchy/pseuds/SpaceMatriarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is dead. John moves on. Sherlock doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This story is available in Chinese here: http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2531172405

“Why now?” Dr. Thompson asks.

She’s checking you for signs of denial.

“You know why I’m here,” You respond, and it’s true. She does. There was an article on the disappearance of Richard Brook on the fourth page of the Telegraph this morning, and newsprint has stained the heel of her palm. She’s an academic, so she won’t read the Sun, and mental health professionals tend to be liberal, which rules out the Daily Mail.

“You read the newspapers.” Very good, John.

“Sometimes.”

When you say it out loud, your voice cracks. You tell the story as it was. Your therapist hesitates when you disagree with the publicly known ‘facts’, but writes it all down the same.

She concludes that you’re dealing with depression and grief. Idiot. You don’t need a psychology degree to tell that – a particularly intelligent dog could do it.

You’re told to say all the things you never said. You take that information and stuff it in the back of your mind, and why do you even go to therapy if you clearly won’t let them help you?

\---

I expect you to stare at the black stone sadly, for a while. Maybe murmur something clinical and predictable, directed at me. Instead, you lay your hand on the top and tell me everything that you never had a reason to say before.

“I was so alone,” You say. “And I owe you so much.”

I can’t say the same, of course. Not only because I can’t _say_ anything, but because I was perfectly fine before we met. That doesn’t mean that you didn’t make it all better.

I wonder, for the first time in a long time, if you saved my life the day we met, or I was cleverer than the cabbie. Then I wonder if that was really all it meant.

You ask me to come back. You ask me to not ‘be dead’. To ‘stop all this’. I can’t. You know I can’t. You believe I can. I wish I could tell you, just so you’d stop worrying.

You turn and walk away like a soldier, and that hurts more.

\---

Back at home, you limp up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson shouts hello, but your response is less than verbal. You enter the flat through the kitchen door, because you’re subconsciously avoiding the sitting room. I have two theories for that. One is most plausible, but the other requires further observation.

As you put on the kettle, you reach into your jacket to get rid of your gun. It’s idiotic, carrying a loaded firearm into a psychologist’s office. If she’d suspected, you’d have been institutionalized before you could put up any argument regarding your personal safety, now that London’s underbelly are operating without their ringleader, and Moran, at least, is liable to aim for some petty eye-for-an-eye revenge scheme over Moriarty’s death. Which neither you nor I were responsible for, but he doesn’t know that.

When you put the gun to the countertop, your fingers linger on the grip a moment too long. I rest my hand on yours, and the nonexistent weight is enough to guide you to drop it.

Not today, John. Not today.

\---

We meet Mary in the summer. She’s a paediatrician, one of whose patients outgrows her and moves on to you. The emails start out as purely professional – she starts flirting first.

You meet for coffee. She’s outgoing, pretty, and I am forced to admit, not as stupid as most of the young women you’ve courted. You could have done much worse.

I would have liked her.

“You live on your own?” She asks, as she walks into the flat for the first time.

“Yeah, for a while, no,” You say. “I mean, there’s Mrs. Hudson, but I’m the only one upstairs.”

You’re pussyfooting around me. Stop it. It won’t make her as uncomfortable as you think it will.

“Was he your flatmate? Or you boyfriend? The guy who lived with you, I mean.”

 “No,” You insist. “Don’t do this to me, I know you read the papers.”

She doesn’t think you’re in denial, you idiot, she doesn’t know. She’s honestly surprised, and her eyes widen noticeably.

“So you’re _that_ John Watson?” She breathes. “I’d heard of you, just a bit, but the press was more occupied with your friend. You, um, you have my sympathy. For your loss. If it means anything.”

“Thanks,” You mumble. You’re wondering if she thinks I’m a fake, too. She does. She also knows that if you weren’t grieving anyways, my things wouldn’t still be on the mantelpiece, and my chair wouldn’t be so pointedly untouched.

You make her tea and tell her stories, even though she doesn’t ask for them, and you both love it. She understands you very well, and you, her.

I do like her, John. You did well.

\---

When you get engaged, I expect you to move out of Baker Street, but Mary wants to come here, instead. It’s a bit of a shock. My microscope has been perching on the side of the worktop for the past 26 months, and all of a sudden it’s been tidied away, in a box, with my slides and samples and the odd Bunsen burner, and shoved into the back of your closet.

I feel a bit hurt. You’ve packed me away and hidden me under shoes. And for one of your girlfriends, no less. You contemplate my violin, and if I could hit you, I would, but you decide to leave it be, for now. I sulk, of course, and you should expect no less.

You go out and return with Mary, her dog, and more boxes that your car should reasonably be able to fit in one load. You say you haven’t finished cleaning, yet, but she looks almost offended.

“Leave the violin, leave the books, and leave the cow skull,” She orders. “The human skull and knife are a bit much, but within reason, I want you to leave it like it is.”

“Mary,” You argue. “You have stuff. We’ll get new stuff as a couple. We need to make room for it. It may be the same address, but it’s a new life we’re starting. Half of Sherlock’s things are just rubbish he couldn’t be bothered to throw out, anyway.”

If I could hit you, John Watson…

She puts a hand to your cheek and looks at you with something disturbingly close to pity. “And we’ll make room as we go.”

Out of one of the boxes currently balancing precariously on the sofa, she pulls a framed photograph, and walking to the fireplace she says “We all have pasts, John. They make us who we are. You wouldn’t love me pre-Robert anymore than I would love you pre-Sherlock.” She shuffles some things around, and stands the photo frame up near the end. It’s a picture of herself and a young man, in a restaurant, at night, smiling. By his thumb, the man is a pilot. By their rings, they’re engaged.

She rearranges things a bit more, and places next to it the Hat-Man and Robin article that Mrs. Hudson framed for us as a joke, which she had to retrieve from the other side of the sitting room.

“Do you understand? We’ll make room for the past and the future. In our hearts and in our home.”

You laugh, because it’s cheesy and overly romantic. Then you hold her tightly and tell her you love her.

She really is a good one for you, John.

\---

The dog keeps staring at me. It’s making me uncomfortable.

“Stoney!” Mary calls from the sofa, but he keeps his eyes fixed on me. “Stone. Stone, what are you looking at? Come here.” The dog won’t move and she gets frustrated, puts down her book, and squats by him.

“There’s no food on the chair, you mutt.” She scratches behind his ears. “Look – nothing there. Let’s go!”

He still doesn’t move. She gives up and goes back to her book.

When you get home, you ask Mary if she wants to go for a walk. It’s a nice sunny Sunday in summer, so why not? While she’s getting her shoes on, you call the dog again. “Gladstone! C’mon, boy, walk time!”

“He’s been staring at the chair all morning. I think he’s in love with it.”

You clip the leash to his collar and tug it. “That’s enough, now, let’s go.” Still, nothing. You sigh, look at the dog a while, and then sit on the ground beside it.

“John, what on earth are you doing?” She asks, hint of a chuckle in her voice.

“I’ll just be a minute,” You reply. “I’m working on the dog, here.” She leans on the door frame and watches.

“Do you see a spirit?” You ask Gladstone, in the softest voice I’ve ever heard you use. “I read somewhere that dogs can see spirits, yes? Well, let me tell you about this spirit. There was a man who sat in this chair a long time ago. He was very smart, very brave, and very loving, in his strange way. He made a lot of good people very happy. It’s a good spirit, Stoney. It belongs here. It’s going to protect you, and protect Mary, and me, and maybe a little baby, someday. And it will never leave here, or stop being good, because it belongs here, alright? So let the spirit be, and come for a walk with us.”

I’m flattered, and happy, and this makes up for the almost letting Mrs. Hudson donate my chemistry equipment. This time, the dog goes easily. You descend the stairs with your arm around your fiancée, and I do catch the small smile that graces your lips.

\---

Mary is diagnosed with cancer shortly after the wedding. We go into the doctor’s office with her. Your hand doesn’t shake. I wish I could hold it.

You’re both used to dealing with coughs and colds, and your previous experience was all in violent injury, not disease. These are the problems you refer to a specialist at work. Neither of you know that the chemo is only comfort food.

She waits until she has no hair left to quit her job. She wears hoodies and hats, but isn’t ashamed, really. She refuses to get a wig. You still read together for an hour most evenings. You still eat out Saturday nights, sometimes with friends. You still go for longs walks with Gladstone in the middle of the day on Sundays. As far as you know, Mary is the same as ever, only a bit weaker and bald.

If I could tell you, I really don’t know if I would.

\---

When she dies, I don’t get a chance to tell her how good she was for you. I expected she would be like me, and that we might talk, but after a truly indescribable feeling, not unlike two people brushing past each other in the street, she is gone.

After she’s dead, you keep talking to her. You tell her you love her, and then mumble it in a million different ways, and then you just cry quietly, until a nurse comes running at the sound of the cardiograph, and sooner or later you have to go home.

\--

Two weeks isn’t long enough for me to be comfortable with you getting anywhere near your gun unnecessarily. But today you’ve decided to clean it.

Of course, you logic is by no means flawed. What good would a poorly maintained gun do when robbers break in at half past three in the morning? But you aren’t cleaning it because you’re afraid, or for protection.

You’re cleaning your gun so you can think. Not just think, but think about the gun. You’ve managed to fool yourself into thinking otherwise – I’m not so easily duped.

When you’re finished, you sit at the kitchen table with the weapon in your hand, and you stare at it. You want to and you don’t want to, all at once. I grasp your wrist and squeeze in at the pressure points. The nonexistent pressure is enough, and you drop the gun.

You cry instead. I don’t like seeing you crying, but it’s better than the alternative.

Not today, John. Not today.

\--

You haven’t left the flat in three days. Please get out. Go see your sister. Have lunch with Molly and her new boyfriend. See a film, alone if you must. Have a pint with Mike. Do something.

Just stop sitting there with tea you never intend to drink and newspapers you aren’t actually reading.

For god’s sake, John, even the damned dog is worried about you.

\---

It’s Sunday afternoon. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll come. The dog is restless, and I’m up for leaving the flat today. Please, John, please.

\---

She wouldn’t have wanted you to be like this, you know.

\---

You make a list of people you care about, and then cross off the ones who are dead. You’re left with Harry, Molly, and Mike. Bill Murray was killed in action. Lestrade did himself in when he lost his job. Mrs. Hudson’s age caught up with her late last year. Mycroft doesn’t count because you hate him as much as I do.

This should never have happened. I doubt my decisions, that day.

I’m sorry, John.

\---

You wake up in the middle of the night, but you don’t get out of bed and pace or toss and turn yourself back to sleep like you usually do after nightmares.

You stare at the ceiling. You’re numb. I want to hold your hand.

Suddenly, calmly, you roll over onto your stomach, to flip on the light. You grasp the knob of the drawer of your bedside table.

The bedside table drawers aren’t large. Mary only kept a novel on her side. You only keep your gun.

I put my hand over the drawer, and you stop pulling. The nonexistent resistance is enough, and you roll back over onto your side, facing Mary’s side of the bed.

“I’m an idiot,” You whisper to no one.

Not today, John. Not today.

\---

For five years, I’ve been enough.

We’re driving out to the suburbs to see your sister. The radio is on, but you aren’t listening. At least you’re getting out of the flat. I’m glad for that.

Harry’s remarried and adopted. You’re an uncle. Maybe that’s making you happy, giving you a purpose. You could adopt your own child, you know. It’s not too late. You don’t need a partner to be a good parent.

Gladstone is snoring in the backseat. I protected him like you said I would, didn’t I? You would make a good father, John. I’d make a terrible mother, but as far as supernatural guides go, I just want you to be happy.

Speed up or slow down, just don’t get to that intersection at the same time as that truck. He’s not paying attention. Professional truck drivers think they can afford to do that, you know.

The light is yellow. You can make it, but don’t, because he’s going to run his red. John, he isn’t breaking at all. Don’t risk it. John!

I put my hand on your knee and push as hard as I can to get you to break. The nonexistent force isn’t enough, and the truck goes through the driver’s side of the vehicle.

John? God, John? Somebody needs to call an ambulance. Somebody alive, somebody who actually can call an ambulance. If you could hear me, John, I swear –

Sherlock?

What?

I can hear you.

No, you can’t. You’re still alive. I didn’t keep you safe this long for nothing.

But I can. Am I… are we…?

…

Sherlock?

Yes.

Is Mary like this, too?

Mary must have been settled, she passed on almost immediately.

Why didn’t you? Your reputation?

Not really. I was waiting.

For what?

You. Either for you to be alright without me, or move on with me. I suppose you aren’t settled, or you wouldn’t still be here.

Sherlock?

Yes?

I’m settled.

What do you mean?

You just told me that Sherlock Holmes, the man with no heart, devoted his afterlife to me. I’m settled.

Well, if you’re settled, I’m settled.

Oh.

Do you suppose we’ll see Mrs. Hudson, there? And Lestrade?

Where’s there?

Wherever we’re going.

I dunno. We might.

I hope we see Mary, too.

You liked her?

Yeah.

Good. Then we’ll be happy.

Take my hand.

Are we going? Now?

Who knows?

I’m actually a terrified, god help me.

So am I. That’s why I want to hold your hand.

 

You smile at me, and lace our fingers together.

Let’s go, you say, and we do.


End file.
